The sky had not yet recovered from the divine scream.
A jagged chasm of lightning split the heavens, momentarily illuminating the ruined spires and shattered wards of what had once been Storm's Creed's sanctum. The ground still trembled beneath the aftershock of Martin's strike. Ash curled in the air like incense left burning too long.
Hovering above the crater, the divine spirit pulsed—alive, but not whole. Its body shimmered with unstable form: obsidian bones laced in flowing metal, a ribcage half-dissolved into clouds, a heart visible through shifting gaps in its torso, beating too fast, too bright. Its voice had no words—only shrieks of sound, each one fraying the edges of thought.
Without worshippers.
Without doctrine.
Without shape.
It thrashed through the skies like a newborn star denied its cradle.
"Well," Martin muttered, brushing soot from his collar, "this escalated."
A heavy thud behind him.
Belisarius landed in a half-kneel, his armor cracked across the shoulder and thigh, Compliance sparking at the seams with each movement. He coughed once—blood on his lips—but stood tall all the same.
"You idiot," he growled. "It's not just wild—it's untethered. There's no soul-weight binding it to form. If its core ruptures, the resulting backlash will poison everything in a hundred kilometers. The land. The air. Even time might fracture around the epicenter."
Martin nodded, pulling a sealed rod from his coat. "Right. Let's not have that. You distract it while I finish this."
Belisarius narrowed his eyes. "You're giving orders now?"
"You were going to do it anyway," Martin replied.
"Fair," Belisarius grunted, before leaping skyward.
Above the crater,
The divine spirit sensed the approach of a living will and screamed—a column of lightning arcing from its chest as it hurtled toward Belisarius. The Warden gritted his teeth and twisted mid-air, Compliance's blade intercepting the bolt. The runes along the sword's edge flared, absorbing just enough to stop the blast from atomizing him.
He crashed through the bolt, landing atop a crumbled archway, the stone sagging under his weight. Mana scorched through the air like wildfire. The spirit was already turning, reforming tendrils of energy that acted as limbs and weapons both.
"Calm down, little one," Belisarius muttered under his breath. He raised his sword.
The spirit didn't speak—it howled. A lance of condensed mana erupted from its chest, spearing toward the Warden. Belisarius deflected it, but the force of the blow threw him into a tower's skeletal remains. Rubble collapsed around him.
He rose.
"You'll have to hit harder than that."
The spirit obliged.
It descended like a collapsing star, slamming into the stone and cracking the earth for hundreds of meters in every direction. A crater formed inside the larger crater, and in its center—Belisarius, armor scorched, braced behind a radiant shield formed from Compliance's guard.
He charged.
The sword met the spirit's mass—fleshless and howling. Sparks and ether flew. The blade carved a clean line through the god-thing's shoulder, cleaving vapor from vapor, destabilizing its upper form. The spirit shrieked and retaliated—claws forming from ambient power, slicing through air like guillotines.
One caught Belisarius's helm. Metal screamed as it twisted and fell away. His face—scarred, jaw tight—was bare to the storm.
He didn't stop.
Every motion was practiced, precise—an anchor in the chaos. He ducked low, drove his sword into the god's flank, and poured raw mana from his own core directly into the spirit's structure, overloading its channels. It convulsed mid-air, losing cohesion for a moment.
That moment was enough.
Belisarius hurled it into the ground. The impact shattered the remains of the sanctum's foundation and sent debris flying for miles. He descended after it like a meteor, his sword trailing condensed mana like a comet tail.
The blade plunged into the spirit's chest.
It shrieked again—not in pain, but in awareness. It saw Belisarius for the first time—not as an obstacle, but as a threat. Its form condensed, pulling in tendrils and storm-flesh, forming a more humanoid shape: tall, flickering, eyes like twin halos of lightning.
And then it fought back.
They clashed.
Belisarius drove Compliance forward—every swing of his sword carving gashes in the unstable world around them. The divine spirit retaliated with pure elemental devastation: bolts of divine fire, waves of reverse time, arcs of transmuted gravity.
Each one should have killed him.
None did.
Because the Warden of Varncrest did not fall to gods who had no name.
He used every tool: temporal anchor runes to hold his footing when time rippled, shadow compression seals to cut off the spirit's regen cycles, kinetic feedback spells to return its own force back on itself.
Still, it was not enough to kill it.
Only to delay.
The spirit adapted.
A jagged halo formed around its head—a sign it was nearing full conceptual stability. It now had a shape. A center. It was becoming a god.
"Damn it," Belisarius snarled, coughing up blood. His mana reserves were dwindling. The armor's internal channels sparked erratically, unable to maintain full containment.
But he couldn't stop. Not yet.
So he raised his sword one last time and roared—a true Warden's cry, loud enough to part stormclouds, focused enough to draw the spirit's attention again. He drove forward, body barely holding together, and rammed the sword into the god's throat.
And for one brief instant—
The storm blinked.
The spirit faltered.
Above them, the sky split again—not from divine power this time, but from a single, focused spell sigil.
Martin's voice echoed faintly through the air, "Okay. I'm done. Step back."
Belisarius grinned, blood on his teeth.
"About time."
He kicked off the spirit and flew backward, away from the forming divine halo.
The spirit, enraged, turned toward the new threat.
Toward Martin.